Sheepdogs
by dogbearinggifts
Summary: A broken young vet walks into a bar. He's drunk, and sobbing over a photo of men he can't possibly know. Somebody wants to kick him out. Somebody else says no. Slight AU. Centers on Klaus, but told from outsider POVs.
1. He Saw the Ghosts

_Author's Note: This story began as a fixfic, exploring how the scene in the VFW might have gone had a kinder vet spoken to Klaus (and told the douche vet to chill). It soon expanded into something more. I originally published it as separate oneshots, but for the sake of convenience, I'm going to publish them as chapters in the same story. _

* * *

"You see that?"

Jim saw just about everyone who walked through those doors—which tended to be a small but devoted crowd, plus or minus a handful depending on the day of the week—but this one was hard to miss. He'd walked right through without a word of greeting, his mop of dark curls bobbing against the sea of white and grey.

"Lookit him. Marching on in like he's one of us."

"It's not like Vietnam was the last war we fought." Jim took a stab at the cue ball. His shot sent it crashing into the four which in turn sent the two across the table. "I've seen younger vets."

"Not here."

The kid had helped himself to the bar, sure, but he was a first. Most young folks preferred to flock with their own, flitting around the trendier bars downtown, the ones with names like Hawk and Hound or some word chosen by a blindfolded drunk man from a random page in the dictionary. Places that served pretentious drinks at pretentious prices, with little to offer besides an admittedly good—if overpriced—selection of craft beer. This kid should've headed to one of those, or else curled up at home with a bottle and whatever thoughts drove him to it. A VFW bar should've been the furthest destination from his mind. A memorial wall should have been out of the question.

He almost didn't see Mike start forward until he was three steps past, but instinct honed by years of familiarity with the man prevailed and Jim caught his shoulder. "I'll talk to him."

"Like hell you will." Mike tried to shrug the hand off, but Jim tightened his grip. Not enough to hurt, not enough to insult—just enough to let him know it wouldn't be that simple.

"If he's pulling the same shit as that asshole at Outback," Jim said, meeting Mike's gaze, "you can handle him."

A few seconds passed, and Mike broke free with a turn back toward the pool table. He snatched up his cue with enough force to let Jim know he didn't have long to sort out the truth, but until then he wouldn't do much more than miss easy shots and grumble under his breath. He'd want Jim to march straight on over and make demands, but Jim moved with the slow reverence the wall's solemnity demanded.

The kid's head was bowed, but that didn't hide the tears, didn't mask the heaves of his chest as the sobs came. Silent sobs, quiet tears, the sort of grief that didn't call attention to itself as it devoured its host from within. Jim nearly placed a hand on his shoulder, but a glint of steel dangling against his shirt made him think better of it.

"Somebody you know?"

"Yeah." He opened his eyes. Jim followed his gaze to what seemed to be the picture in question and his heart skipped a beat.

The soldier had been a mystery long before Jim relocated to the city. He wasn't the only one assumed MIA, not by a long shot, but he was the only one whose name remained missing. No draft card. No papers. No ID. Nothing to prove he'd ever served, nothing to prove he'd ever existed, save for a half-smiling face in an old photograph.

A face mirrored by the young man standing before it now.

Jim tamped down a dozen questions and any semblance of enthusiasm. This wasn't a time for questions—not that kind, anyway. He nodded to the mystery man. "That him?"

"Yeah."

The answer didn't sit right. The photograph dated from 1968, and this kid couldn't be older than thirty. He wasn't old enough to have met the soldier, let alone to plow through a VFW bar to cry over his photograph. The stink of alcohol hung about him like cheap cologne, but of the many drunk men Jim had met, this was the first and only to sob over a stranger's photograph in a bar patronized by veterans thirty to forty years his senior. It was a lie, the kid knew it was a lie, and Jim wouldn't in a hundred years call him on it.

A stick cracked against the cue ball, and pool balls clattered across the table. Mike swore, likely less at the outcome of his shot and more at the continued presence of an unwanted stranger. The kid closed his eyes as a fresh round of tears slipped down his cheeks.

"You don't have any other pictures of him?"

He shook his head.

"I can see about getting you a copy of that one, if you want."

It seemed to take a moment for the question to register, but when it did, he looked another long moment at the photograph before turning to Jim. And when he did, Jim saw the reason he'd come.

He saw the ghosts.

They were there in his eyes, of course, but they'd also made themselves at home in the lines on his face, settled on his shoulders to hold him lower than gravity alone. Jim couldn't name them, not without knowing where he'd served, but he did not for a moment doubt this kid had served. The tears and photo, the dog tags and the tattoo partially covered by the sleeve of his shirt formed an image and the ghosts completed it. He'd been to hell, and hell had followed him home.

"You….you could?"

It wasn't quite hope that had edged its way into his voice, but it made Jim's chest ache. He hadn't promised anything, hadn't offered more than half a chance, but he might as well have offered the shirt off his back.

"Picture's fifty years old and a military record," Jim admitted, "so there's got to be some special procedure for getting a copy, if they can get one. But I've got friends over at City Archives, and they've got contacts. I'll see what they can do."

Whatever had buoyed him up for those few seconds leaked out like air from a balloon, leaving his shoulders to sag. "Like they'd bother."

With some effort, Jim kept the pang from his voice. With more, he added a subtle note of false cheer. "Archivists are just librarians who hoard books instead of lending 'em out," he said, repeating a quip he'd heard from both parties. "You ever met a librarian?"

"No."

"Bunch of sentimental bastards." His mouth quirked at the saga he'd witnessed during his first few months of volunteer work, of the time and expense and calls to libraries in ten different states before one of them finally turned up a copy of a rare out-of-print novel, all so one old woman could reread a story she'd loved as a teenager. "If they can get you a copy, they'll get you a copy."

Another crack, a louder one this time, accompanied by the sound of pool balls rolling across a felted table, filled the silence.

"You want me to check?"

After a moment's consideration, the kid nodded. "Yeah." His voice cracked. "I…I'd like that."

HIs fingers brushed the glass laid over the photograph, brushed the face of the man whose resemblance he bore. No—not him. The man beside him. Jim recalled his name, but at that moment, at the very moment when remembering it seemed most important, the name refused to surface.

"Klaus?"

The kid didn't turn from the photo, but he let his hand fall. "Yeah?"

Jim tensed as a young man clad in head-to-toe black started forward, calculating how many steps it would take to place himself between Klaus and the newcomer. But the newcomer's movements were cautious and slow, absent a single trace of irritation or anything that might be taken for aggression, and Jim allowed himself to relax, allowed the newcomer to place a hand on Klaus' shoulder. The resulting flinch was enough for Jim to see and probably enough for the newcomer to feel, but no more than that.

"You wanna tell me what's going on?"

Klaus' lips parted, then pressed together. His gaze lingered on the photograph a second longer before dropping to the floor.

"I was just about to get his number before I talk to Archives about getting him a copy of that picture," Jim said, nodding to the photo in question.

The newcomer blinked as though Jim had spoken gibberish. He stared, opened his mouth for an apparent question, then closed it and shook his head, as if it was all too much to consider at once. "Fine. You got a pen?"

The newcomer's name was Diego—or at least, that was the name he'd scribbled beneath one number before taking the paper back and writing a second beneath it in smaller print. "Call that first one and ask for Klaus. Or me, I guess. If you can't get anyone at the first number, hang up and try the second one."

Klaus was steady enough getting to the car, but Diego helped him into his seat anyway. A partially empty bottle of vodka was pushed to the floor, only to be retrieved with unsteady hands. Jim waited to see if he peered through the window to meet his gaze or simply seek him out, but for a long moment he stared at nothing but the floor. A breeze, chillier than usual for this time of year, made Jim long for the jacket he'd left inside.

"You his brother?"

Diego halted, turned around. The question had been a guess, but from the looks of things, that guess was correct.

"Yeah. I'm his brother."

Jim cast another glance at Klaus in the front seat, head tipped back against the headrest, eyes closed. The face of the unnamed soldier broke into Jim's mind again, imposed itself over the face of the man before him, but none of the questions the resemblance brought made Jim's insides twist the way the sight of Klaus did. None of those questions were as important as the man who had caused them.

"Take care of him, will you?"

Diego looked at Klaus too, watching him through the window, seeing the weary anguish and the bottle in his hands. He let out a short sigh.

"I'll try."

They exchanged nods, and Diego climbed into the front seat and started the engine. Jim watched from the sidewalk as he pulled out onto the street, watched until the car rounded a corner and disappeared from sight. Even when it was long gone, he kept on watching.


	2. Dead Ringer

Richard had just transferred his whites from washer to dryer when a dead man stepped into the laundromat.

There was no proof the man had died, of course, no evidence one way or the other, but when considering the fate of a soldier who'd gone missing from the A Shau Valley at the height of the Vietnam War and who hadn't been heard from in fifty years, death was a safe assumption. It was the conjecture he and others had worked from when trying to find the man's draft card, his records, his name, and it was the presupposition that had spurred Richard in that search. That soldier had a name, and whatever family was left deserved to hear it, even if the speaker delivered no more news than what they'd already assumed. But his likeness was all that remained, and that likeness had been burned into Richard's memory from countless minutes poring over that photograph.

Now here he was, dragging himself into the laundromat.

Richard knew he ought to go back to his laundry, look away and give the kid space to do whatever he'd come for and head back out unimpeded, but he stood dumbly with hand on the dryer door, watching the kid shuffle from the entrance toward the wall of washers. A sheen of sweat clung to his face and bare arms. With no idea of where he lived and no plans to ask, Richard couldn't say how long he'd been out in the evening chill; but it didn't take much to guess he'd been out there too long. Even if he'd left with a jacket and lost it somewhere along the way, he was exposed now and he'd remain exposed for as long as he stayed out.

"He's not here." The kid muttered it to no one but himself, but when he turned for the door, Richard spoke up.

"Who's not here?"

The kid had looked about to take another step, but he halted and turned instead. That face—dear God, it was the same. The exact same face he'd stared at and wondered over and spent years trying to name stared back at him. Richard wished he had the photo in front of him just to scour it for any differences, anything that might prove he wasn't seeing what his mind screamed he saw. This kid was fifty years too young to be the one in the picture, twenty years too young to be his son, but Richard would be damned if he wasn't a dead ringer for the soldier himself.

"My brother." The words came out in a monotone, as if inflection was too much effort. "Need to find him."

Richard knew he ought to ask about the brother. Get as detailed a description as this kid would offer, determine his last known whereabouts, offer to call the police if circumstances called for it. A part of him, a part he ignored, longed to ask if he knew this kid from somewhere, try and tease more information about the photo out of him. But all he could see in that moment was the bare arms and sweat, the disheveled curls and drawn expression, the way he hunched slightly as if standing upright cost more energy than he could afford.

"No offense," Richard said, "but it looks like you need to head back home and rest."

The kid cut his eyes briefly to one side. For an instant, Richard thought an irritated look crossed his face, an expression that said I told you so. "Yeah. But he was drunk when he ran off, so you know. Can't let him get too far."

The sigh in those words was audible, and Richard couldn't have blamed him for it if he'd wanted to. The words themselves told him he ought to let the kid go on his way, head out to find this brother before his drunkenness led him to disaster.

"How long have you been looking?"

The kid shrugged, and a name sprang to mind. Klaus. Jim had mentioned it when noting his resemblance to the unknown soldier—though that was far from the only detail he'd recalled. "Didn't get to ask where he served, but it must've been bad…."

"Why don't you sit down here a minute," Richard said, nodding to the row of molded plastic chairs bolted to a wall, "and give yourself a chance to regroup?"

Klaus hesitated. His hands still gripped his arms, though not as desperately; it appeared the warmth of the laundromat had countered the lingering outdoor chill. He didn't meet Richard's gaze.

"Look, if you're gonna be out in the cold without a coat, you need to be smart about it. Figure out where to go next and how long it'll take to get there. You'll have a hard time helping this brother of yours if you collapse before you find him."

He paused a minute longer before a wan smile tugged at his mouth. "You sound like somebody's dad."

Somebody's dad. Not his dad. Just somebody's.

"Sit your ass down, son."

He made a small show of dragging himself to the chairs, but he sat his ass down and rested his head against the window. Richard watched him a moment, went to the vending machine and cast another glance over his shoulder. Klaus made no move to stand, let alone leave, so Richard fed some money into the machine, retrieved a bottle of water, and joined Klaus at the window. Klaus watched as Richard pushed his knitting onto an adjacent chair and sat.

"She gonna be mad?"

"Is who gonna be mad?"

Klaus nodded to the beginnings of a purple sweater for Richard's granddaughter, the feet of a neon pink T. Rex barely completed. "That old lady when she sees you moved her shit. Touched some granny's yarn on the bus once." He shook his head, as if to ward off the memory. "Sometimes, I can still hear her screeching at me. You insolent hoodlum! I should tie you up with that yarn and hang you from the window!"

Richard laughed. "I think we're safe. I'm the only one knitting here."

"You knit?"

Richard untwisted the cap from the bottle and handed it over, unable to help a wry smile. "You surprised?"

"No. I mean—yeah. Kinda." He took a swig. "Just always thought old women named Agnes had a monopoly on it, you know? Cool that you rescued that yarn from their Knitting Mafia."

He chuckled. "We did have an Agnes who joined us for a while. Sweet woman. Kept getting frustrated, never got the hang of it. Still sends us free donuts, though."

Klaus stared at the sweater, and Richard tried to name what he saw on his face, aside from the weariness and disorientation that had followed him in. Curiosity, yes, but a bit of something else. Longing, maybe, but the sweeter sort rather than the bitter one.

"There's a few of us who meet," Richard went on. "You'd mostly be around other vets, but anybody's welcome."

Klaus nodded. He left no opening for Richard to ask where he'd served, but there was no confused denial on his part, either. It seemed Jim's guess had been spot-on.

From where Richard sat, he could spy the pulse in the younger man's neck, hammering away quickly—too quickly. The laundromat was always slightly above a comfortable temperature, but Klaus had been covered in sweat from the moment he walked in. He looked like death warmed over, as one of Richard's friends might say, and here he was out on the streets alone.

"So your brother. He just got drunk and ran off?"

"Pretty much."

"On foot?"

"Yeah."

A call to the police would be useless, then. Not that a drunk man roaming the streets on foot wasn't a danger to himself, but he wouldn't be as much a danger to others as a drunk man behind the wheel. Wait a few hours, and if he doesn't come back on his own, we'll send somebody out to look, was what the dispatcher would say.

"Where have you looked so far?"

"Couple clubs. Some bars."

His suffering could belong to something else—a nasty flu, maybe, or a bout of food poisoning that should have sent him to the hospital. But if it didn't, if the sinking sensation in Richard's stomach was indeed the sickening recognition of an old foe, then Klaus had approached temptation more than once and walked away.

And he intended to skirt ever closer to that chasm until his brother was found.

"You want me to help you look?"

"You've got laundry."

"It can wait."

Klaus' gaze traveled from him to the dryers and back again, settling into incredulity.

Richard cracked a smile. "If someone decides they can't live without my tighty-whities, I can buy more."

That seemed to prompt a moment's thought, but it ended with Klaus shaking his head. "No, he…I can't pounce on him with a total stranger."

He had a point, loathe as Richard was to admit it. There was no telling what state this brother would be in when he was found. Best to have him found by family. "Is there anyone else he knows? Any other siblings? I could call."

"Yeah, but they're all out trying to stop the end of the world, so…." He sighed, briefly straightened. "Looks like it's down to me."

Richard's smile remained. It was hard not to like someone with such a casual flair for the dramatic. "What's he look like?"

"Big guy. Blond hair, clean shaven."

"Heavyset, then."

"No, just big. Tall. Big shoulders. Tiny little head."

"Sounds like he'd be hard to miss," Richard said slowly, dismissing the possibility that he'd spotted this brother and didn't know who he might be. "What's his name?"

"Luther."

This couldn't be Klaus Hargreeves. He and Jim had discussed it at length when the coincidence of a young man named Klaus having a brother named Diego surfaced, but if the Klaus Hargreeves had joined the military, the media would have latched onto that story like leeches and bled it dry. A brother named Diego, another named Luther….well, Luther and Klaus weren't the most common names, but Richard knew of at least a few young mothers who had chosen one or both for their children at the height of the Umbrella Academy's fame.

"I'll keep an eye out, try and get him to stay here if I find him."

"Thanks."

Klaus stood, and Richard had the urge to cast about for some excuse to keep him there. Something, no matter how small, no matter how ridiculous, that would keep him from entering the lair of a monster that still had its claws sunk deep. Tell him he'd seen that brother of his somewhere safe, that he knew someone who had. The lie would crumble the second it passed his lips, but at least he'd have tried.

Richard got to his feet, fished a notepad and pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled his number. "If you don't find him soon, call me."

"You sure? It's getting kinda late."

"I'm out here doing laundry on a Wednesday night. You really think I've got anything better to do?"

That raised another small smile, and Klaus pocketed the number.

"Call if you run into any trouble, all right? Anything goes wrong, you just need a hand, give me a call."

"Thanks."

It wasn't a promise, or even an agreement, but he had a number. That was something. "Be careful out there."

Klaus nodded, paused, dipped his head, and shuffled back toward the door. It might not be right to let him go off alone, but it was the only thing to do, all Richard could do. Let him make his choice and hope it had a halfway decent ending.

"Hey."

Klaus turned, hand on the door.

"We'll meet tomorrow at seven. Me and the others. Downtown library, small conference room on the second floor."

"I don't even know how to knit."

"Neither did I."

Klaus smiled again. Like his other smiles, it wasn't quite happy, but it was far from despairing. Weary and small, but a little hopeful and still there. It remained in place as he opened the door, following him out with the chime of the bell.


	3. Tattoos with Better Stories

Jim didn't know what to make of the unnamed soldier's expression.

It wasn't a whole smile, but it was near enough to one for Jim to wonder what might lurk behind it. Such a look wasn't unexpected of a soldier in an active war zone, but there was something more about it, some strange contentment that kept it from sinking into despair. Not for the first time, Jim found himself searching the faces of the other men in his unit for any clue, no matter how small, that might force the facts in his head to fall into their proper places and form a picture clearer than the one before him. But no matter how long he looked, no matter how much the pit in his stomach urged him to look elsewhere, his gaze drifted back, again and again, to David Katz.

The quality of the photograph was par for the course, for its day—a middling caliber that was better than the worst and disappointing when placed alongside the best. Had it been a little less grainy, Jim was certain they'd have been able to make out the barest outlines of the soldier's tattoos, distinguish a few features that might have separated the soldier in the photo from the veteran they knew. A little grainier, and the soldier would have been only somewhat clearer than most images of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, his resemblance to Klaus dismissed just as easily.

Richard took a long pull from his soda, lowered it, and spoke for the first time in a good while.

"What the _hell_?"

* * *

_**Earlier**_

"Okay, so first you need to cast on a few stitches."

"Cast on."

"Right. What you're gonna do is you're gonna make a slipknot and put that over the needle."

"Which needle?"

"Doesn't matter."

Klaus looked down at the two identical knitting needles in his lap. "Oh. Right." He formed the knot easily enough and slipped it over one needle, holding it upright. "Now what?"

"Now you need to make the first stitch."

From all Richard had relayed of his encounter with Klaus the night before, he'd never intended to give the younger man a personal knitting lesson. Plans to meet up with him at the library, to pull him into the circle and let him absorb suggestions and tricks from a group eager to teach had taken a blow when Klaus had called earlier that morning. _"Said he couldn't make it," _Richard had told Jim on their way to the shop._ "Went on about how he'd tried to knit and couldn't do it, so he couldn't come, didn't want to slow us down." _

He'd also said Klaus had sounded as if he'd hoped to leave a message rather than speak to the person he'd called, but that was neither here nor there.

"You'll take one end of the yarn like this." Richard lifted his own yarn to demonstrate. "And then lay it over top the rest to make a loop."

Klaus had to look back at the example once or twice, but he replicated it without trouble.

"Now you'll just slide the loop onto the same needle as the slipknot."

Jim glanced toward the cash register. Aimee shot him a smile before pretending to straighten an immaculate display of crochet hooks. Despite her age, she was an old hand around the shop, having been hired on the year before their knitting group outgrew the small meeting room and moved to the library. She still dropped by whenever night classes aligned to keep Thursdays free, bringing along her latest project and a story or two about her dog.

Klaus tried lifting the loop and sliding it over the needle, as Richard demonstrated, but he hadn't twisted it correctly and the loop disintegrated and he had to form it again. After a moment of frustration, he managed to slide his new loop down alongside the knot.

"Great. Now you'll just do that another eighteen times."

Klaus let out a puff of air that wasn't quite a sigh, but might have been on its way to one. With care, he formed another loop, lifted it gingerly, and placed it on the needle. Richard nodded approval, and Jim's gaze drifted back to the tattoo on Klaus' bicep, to the words _Sky Soldiers _printed above the skull emblem. There were more letters inked in tiny font above, but Klaus' sleeve kept getting in the way and they were too small for Jim to read from where he sat.

Like the olive drab vest he wore, like the dog tags dangling against his shirt, the tattoo was just familiar enough to poke at memories ranging from bittersweet to unpalatable. There were a few sweet ones, sure, but war and time had a way of working in concert to change the flavor of those. Perhaps the words meant something different to Klaus, perhaps there was another reason he had chosen to have them inscribed on his skin, but to see it on a man so young sent a dozen questions bubbling to his mind, each more uncomfortable than the last.

He looked to Richard, but if the man shared his misgivings, he didn't show it. Jim traded a look with his friend, then spoke.

"So Klaus. You from the city?"

Klaus kept his attention on the next stitch he cast on. "Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I've always lived here, so I guess that's where I'm from."

Jim had heard less conclusive answers. "So no military family for you."

He wasn't expecting a laugh, let alone one with such a bitter edge. "Not like that, no."

No confusion crossed Richard's face, but he did toss Jim a quick glance. _Talk later_, it said. Of Klaus, Richard asked: "So what made you decide to enlist?"

Klaus hesitated, and that hesitation went on a little too long for Jim to believe he was simply concentrating on his knitting. "Just kinda….got thrown into it, I guess."

Jim nodded slowly. He'd heard that sentiment before, expressed a dozen different ways—from men who were drafted. Those who enlisted had longer stories, some inspiring and some less so, but they had _stories_. Reasons. Ideals that were confirmed and challenged, shattered and tested. There were exceptions, of course, but when there hadn't been a draft in forty-six years, stories and reasons usually replaced uncertainty and bewilderment.

He looked to Richard, trying to guess whether he should ask the kid where he'd served or leave that to his friend, but Klaus lifted his cast-on stitches for inspection. "Got it!"

"Looks good," Richard said, and Klaus smiled at the approval. "Now you'll take your yarn like this…."

He threaded the yarn around and between his fingers, and Klaus did the same, mimicking as Richard lifted his second needle and slid it into the first stitch. His fingers slipped a bit, missed the yarn the first couple times, but he managed. That smile resurfaced when Richard nodded encouragement.

Jim knew better than to interrupt a novice knitter in the midst of his first uncertain stitches, so he cast about for something, some small and mundane task that might distance him from the questions tapping him on the shoulder. A glance at his watch told him it was a little late for one meal, a little early for the next—as good a time as any for a snack.

"I'm gonna head down to the coffee shop on the corner," he said, stretching. "You guys want anything?"

"Ooh! They still have those breakfast sandwiches, with the sausage and egg on a biscuit with all that melty cheese?"

"I'm sure they do." Jim had expected a little more hesitation from Klaus, but the younger man's enthusiasm brought a smile. "You want anything, Rich?"

"Just coffee."

Jim stood, but before he'd gotten completely to his feet, a familiar glint of steel against Klaus' shirt caught his eye. The letter K was up where the surname belonged, but that only proved this Klaus wasn't a Hargreeves, so he read further.

_What the _hell?

For a long moment, Richard's words hung in a silence filled by low chatter and Tom Petty's voice filtering through the speakers: _Somewhere, somehow, somebody must've kicked you around some…_

"You heard what he said."

Jim nodded. He'd found Richard and Klaus mid-conversation, but he'd caught enough to stop in his tracks and listen. "Maybe he's just read more books than most."

"But why Vietnam?"

"Could just like military history."

Richard shook his head at the photo. "World War Two's the one everybody wants to learn about. Vietnam's the one they want to forget."

After a halfhearted search for a counterpoint, Jim gave up. "Was he…"

Richard met his gaze.

"From the sound of it, he knows a lot about what the 173rd was up to. He talk about anything else? Overall strategies, basic timeline, any other shit that makes it into those books?"

"Not much." He paused in thought. "Actually… I'd have to check the dates, but I don't think he brought up anything outside of '68 or '69."

Jim took another swig of beer, hoping it would quell his unease. Most amateur historian types liked to study everything, and they'd talk your ear off about anything that occurred within their eras of interest. A self-described WWII buff had spoken about D-Day, the myriad faults in Hitler's strategies, the American and English home fronts, and scientific advances courtesy of wartime technology. Not all historians were like that; some had a narrower range. But when a particular era sparked their interest, many of those who made research a hobby became intellectual magpies, snatching up every halfway interesting fact for their ever-growing collections.

"How the hell'd Vietnam come up, anyway?"

"He asked where I'd served."

Klaus should have fielded the question first. He was the mystery, after all, the one who had walked into a room full of strangers to sob over a man fifty years gone. Even if he didn't care to discuss what he remembered, he should have at least mentioned where he'd been. "He say where _he_served?"

"Never got to that, no. But he talked an awful lot about Vietnam."

Jim lapsed into silence again. What he'd seen of that talk, of the look Klaus had worn as he spoke, was enough to make him want to down the rest of his beer, grab another, and head out on the town long enough to put Klaus and the unnamed soldier and everything in between out of his mind. Researchers, amateur historians, history buffs—whatever you wanted to call them, most of them bore a certain expression when their favorite era surfaced in conversation. Their eyes lit up, their faces softened as if in preparation to smile. Some talked with voices pitched higher in excitement; some talked with their hands as well. It had repulsed Jim at first, seeing them discuss the Second World War as if a conflict that had left blood and bodies strewn across a ruined landscape was the plot of a popular film they longed to see again. It wasn't _his _war, but it was still a war. Even after reminding himself that what they knew of it was cold facts on a page, old posters and stories collected years after surrenders were made and victories declared, he couldn't say their enthusiasm set him at ease.

When Klaus spoke of Vietnam, of battles fought years before his time and a war ended decades before his birth, there was no light in his eyes. No eagerness, no sharpened interest, no horror or shock. He responded to Richard's stories with somber nods and words, but not surprise. He'd shared no anecdotes of his own; any facts he'd named had been in the form of questions—were you here, were you there, did you see this go down or were you wrapped up in a different shitshow—but Jim had seen the look in his eyes, heard the subtle catch in his voice before. It was a question, a plea for recognition.

_You've been to hell. Did you see what I saw? Do what I did? _

"You see his forearm?"

Richard's voice, quiet though it was, gave Jim a start, but it faded quickly. "Academy kids weren't the only ones to get those tattoos."

Richard gave a slow nod, eyes on the photo. "Even if he_ is_ that Klaus, it doesn't explain how he got the tags."

_Katz, David_. Jim saw the dog tags in his mind's eye, as sharp and clear as if they sat before him, the name pressed into the metal and his memory. The man himself stood in the photo beside Klaus' doppelgänger.

"Might explain how he knew Katz, if he can talk to the dead."

"Doesn't explain anything else."

Jim said nothing. Something had happened to Klaus—anyone who looked more than a second could see that. But a longer gaze and a while spent listening told a story, one set in a faraway jungle and filled with blood and the chatter of gunfire and awful lights blazing through the darkness—one Klaus was too young to know. One he heard with the solemn quiet of a man who had witnessed it.

_Scars are just tattoos with better stories_. Jim wasn't sure where he'd first heard that or how much stock he put in it, but it had stuck. But when those scars weren't the kind you could show off to a retired Marine over a few drinks, when they were the sort that appeared only as ripples in a pond, there was no narrative. Only a jumble of events and details—a sobbing man and things he shouldn't have known, tattoos with significance that ought to escape him—strung together in a manner that might have made sense in a fever dream, but nowhere else.

"Could be a scam," Jim said. To his relief, Richard shook his head almost immediately.

"Tats are expensive."

"Research is free."

"You don't learn what he learned without reading a shit-ton of books and old documents." He took another sip. "Too much investment for too little payoff."

A similar thought had planted itself in Jim's mind, but hearing it echoed allowed it to take root through the silence that followed. "He never asked for anything."

Richard looked to him; Jim saw him out the corner of his eye as he regarded the photo again.

"Never asked for a goddamn thing. Not even help."

Richard nodded slowly, somberly, and Jim shut his eyes. All those disparate elements swirling around him, all those impossibilities played as fact, and that was what kept Jim from dismissing it all as a sick hoax played for profit. If there was profit to be gained, Klaus didn't seek it. He only sought to carry what he'd brought back with him, even as the burden crushed him beneath its weight.

The two of them stood in silence as the music played.

"Never did track down everyone in his unit," Richard said after a long minute.

Jim nodded. The war had taken some and spared others, but those it spared weren't shielded from death by other means. Others could have lived, but with their whereabouts unknown, they were no more able to name the soldier who appeared in their photo.

"Got any other leads?" Jim asked.

Richard drew a long breath. "There's one guy. Tried contacting him a couple times, wound up getting put in touch with a friend of a friend. That trail might lead to a dead end for all I know….but it might lead somewhere."

Jim looked to the unnamed soldier again. All those years between the taking of the photo and Klaus traipsing into the bar, all those years spent trying to connect the man to a name, had culminated in a morning of knitting and a conversation that made no sense and too much sense.

This lead, this man from Katz's unit—as Richard said, it could be yet another dead end in a long string of dead ends. But if it wasn't, if they could speak to a man who had served alongside the unnamed soldier, had talked with him and eaten with him and exchanged a hundred jokes with him that would have drawn gasps and looks of horror from anyone who didn't spend their days marching from one battlefield to the next….

The thought brought a mixture of anticipation and apprehension, and Jim wasn't sure if the two could be separated.

"And if it doesn't?"

Richard regarded the photo again, and Jim couldn't say whether his gaze went out to the unnamed soldier or to Katz. Maybe it had settled on the both of them.

"Then I guess we're back to square one."

* * *

_Author's Note: If you're curious, the song referenced is "Refugee" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. _


	4. Missing in Action

The man's name was Arthur, and tracking him down had proven, from the beginning, to be more difficult than Richard liked.

Sometimes he enjoyed the search. He liked to find a clue and follow the breadcrumbs down a trail to a discovery both expected and surprising, examine and marvel at all the little facts he picked up along the way. He'd never been fond of puzzles, but after putting the metaphorical pieces together on more than one occasion, he thought he'd finally grasped the appeal.

But there was a difference between struggling to find where a puzzle piece fit and putting the picture together only to find pieces were missing.

The friend of a friend put Richard in touch with a friend, who wasn't home but—thankfully—was up on answering messages. A call to the number Richard was given also ended at an answering machine, but he'd only waited a short while for a call back before his phone rang again.

"God, I'm sorry," the friend—Trevor—said. "I forgot—he's visiting one of his kids. You want the number where he's staying?"

Under ordinary circumstances, Richard would have said no, he'd left a message and that would be fine; but thoughts of Klaus made him hesitate. Accept the number and interrupt the man's vacation, or delay the call and delay answers until after Klaus showed his face again—perhaps long after.

Maybe it wouldn't matter. He'd faced Klaus more than once without an answer to a single one of the questions the younger man raised; doing so again wouldn't be impossible. The kid needed a place to run to, a friend to listen. Richard could provide that without knowing where he'd come from or where he'd served or even his last name.

And yet….

He couldn't face Klaus again, not with all those questions nagging at him. Not with doubt gnawing away at compassion and suspicion threatening to push concern aside.

"You sure he won't mind?"

"Nah. If he can't talk, he'll let you know."

Richard wrote the number down, thanked Trevor and hung up, but didn't dial it immediately. The digits scrawled on a piece of notepaper—they were just a number. A sequence that would bring an interlude to a stranger's visit with his family, if not grind it to a halt. Maybe things would stop there, end with the voice on the other end of the line announcing that he knew next to nothing about the unnamed soldier in the photo.

But maybe not.

Richard brushed a thumb over the paper. It was just a number, but it felt like a key.

* * *

Arthur preferred to be called Art, and if a stranger intruding on a family visit bothered him, his voice didn't show it.

"I've spent the last forty years bouncing around the whole country," he said with a laugh when Richard apologized for the interruption yet again. "Probably made me hard to track down."

"Just a bit."

Art laughed again. "So you want me to come on down today, tomorrow, when?"

Richard glanced again at the number he'd taken down. He'd been told the man had somewhat settled in Arizona, but the area code looked familiar. "How close are you?"

"'Bout forty minutes away."

So his daughter had wound up in one of those towns scattered around the city, the ones that lured tourists in with a cultivated quaintness and a Main Street designed to separate them from their money. "We've got his photo at the VFW here in town."

"I can get there tomorrow. You got directions?"

* * *

Art beat Richard and Jim to the VFW, and despite only starting his walk once hands were shaken and introductions made, he beat them inside and reached the memorial wall a few paces before they did.

"This the guy?"

Even before he closed the gap, Richard knew which soldier his pointing finger highlighted. "That's him."

A smile tugged at one corner of Art's mouth and then the other, but no sooner had it spread than it lost whatever innocence it might have had, turning wistful at best. He shook his head. "Should've known Klaus would show up in the last place you'd expect."

The name was like a thunderclap. Richard tried to think of something, anything to say besides asking him to repeat it, something that wasn't incoherent stammering.

"Klaus?" If Art heard Jim's voice increase in pitch, he didn't show it. "That's his name?"

"His parents were ahead of the curve, I guess."

"My great-grandpa's name was Orange." Richard wasn't sure how he managed to get the words out at all. "Married a woman named Blossom and never heard the end of it."

"Klaus. He have a surname?" Jim asked. It sounded casual enough, but Richard heard the strain in it, the forced nonchalance.

"Hargreeves." Art frowned, looking to the photo again. "Always did think that was weird, once the Academy started making headlines."

Klaus wasn't _too _unusual of a name—not like Orange. It hadn't been the sort of name most mothers would bestow upon their children back in the forties, but it had existed. So had Hargreeves. If the parents of a perfectly harmless baby boy who had done nothing to deserve it could nevertheless choose to saddle him with a name like Orange back in 1843, then a Mrs. Hargreeves in the 1930s or 40s could name her son Klaus.

Richard tried for an unhurried gait as he moved closer to the photograph of the unnamed soldier—toward Klaus Hargreeves, if Art wasn't the perpetrator of the world's strangest and most twisted practical joke. Maybe if he were able to remove it from its frame and study it without the glass, he'd be able to find some discrepancy between this Klaus and the one he knew. It was the light, he decided. The light kept him from seeing it clearly, gave an admittedly spooky coincidence more meaning than it deserved.

Out the corner of his eye, he saw Art frown. "You okay?"

Richard didn't try for a smile, or even a reassuring tone. Art struck him as a smart guy—too smart to be brushed off with something like that. "You want to sit down?"

* * *

There was a table somewhat close to the photo, and that was where they set up operations. Jim fetched a few drinks from the bar and passed them around; Art held onto his beer a moment before speaking.

"You know, I figured I'd just come in and name the guy."

Richard kept both hands wrapped around his soda as he tried to find the proper words. It was tempting to toss all the cards on the table and let Art sort them out—but there was still a chance that all this was a coincidence or something darker. Throwing everything out into the open could muddy the waters before they had an inkling of what lurked beneath.

"We've had some….weird shit happen, these last couple of days," Jim said without looking up. "And it all ties back to that guy in the photo."

"To Klaus," Art said.

"Yeah," Jim said with a hint of a sigh. "To Klaus."

"_We_ still don't know shit about him," Richard added, motioning between himself and Jim. "But you do. Maybe you can help us clear a few things up."

Art fell silent, gazing down at his beer. Richard tried not to hold his breath, tried not to let anticipation and disquiet show on his face. He tried not to watch, too, but that proved fruitless. Slowly, Art's expression softened. Slowly, it became a smile.

"The guy was a trainwreck." He shook his head with a soft chuckle. "But _God_, he was fun."

He leaned forward, resting an elbow on the table. Richard had seen that smile before, wry and expectant all at once—the smile of a man who knew he had some good stories to share.

"This one time, I was just sitting there, minding my own business, and Klaus walks up, plops himself into my lap and goes '_Trust fall!_'" He chuckled again. "Of course, he didn't get to that part until I was already cussing him out."

It wasn't that Richard forgot the reason for Art's presence. It wasn't that he tossed the purpose of hearing his stories aside. But as Art told another story followed by another, as he relaxed into memories he may not have shared before, reason and purpose took a backseat. They remained in the back of his mind, but he was laughing too hard to hear their guidance.

Richard still hadn't gotten his wind back from laughter at the last story when Art slapped the table. "_The ghost moose_! Almost missed that one."

Jim coughed on his beer. "The _what_ moose?"

Art leaned forward with his elbows propped on the table. He liked to do that and gesture broadly as he spoke, Richard had noticed. "So, Klaus didn't know how to drive once he got in country."

"How old was he again?" Richard asked.

Art frowned, as though he'd never considered the question before. "I…I dunno. Late twenties? Anyway." He waved the question aside. "So we've got to teach him. He's in the driver's seat, bumping along—and there's nobody for miles. Out in the middle of nowhere. But everything seems to be going great, he's finally getting the hang of it, and then all of a sudden—_bam_! Guy slams on the brakes, almost pitches us all out. We're all 'What the hell, you almost got us killed,' and he just stares at the road a minute and then he goes, 'I thought I saw a….moose.'"

"You're shitting me," Jim said.

"Nope." Art chuckled. "He said it just like that, too—like he knew he had all of two seconds to think of something good and _that's_ what he came up with."

Richard gulped his soda. "A moose."

"Yep."

"In Vietnam."

"That's what the rest of us said, but he goes, 'Well, _maybe_ they lived here millions of years ago and now there's a ghost moose walking around, ever think of _that_?'"

Art grinned through the laughter that followed.

"I'll bet that story took off," Richard said when he'd straightened out enough to speak.

"God, yes. After that, every goddamn shadow we saw was the ghost moose. Officers pull some new bullshit? Ghost moose. Mail's delayed again? Ghost moose."

Richard grinned. "Did the ghost moose have a name?"

"Spurlock," Art said after another gulp of his drink. "Think it was Charlie who said we should call him Reginald. I thought it was a great name for a moose, but Klaus didn't like that one, and since the ghost moose was his idea—"

"You wanted to go with something he liked," Jim finished.

"Yep. Not sure where he came up with Spurlock, but it stuck."

The name sounded familiar, but Richard couldn't quite place it. He was still trying to match it to a face, a news article or anything else when Art nodded to the photograph on the wall.

"Every man in that picture came up with at least one story about the ghost moose. Dave started writing them all down one night. Gave the collection some long and important name, like _For Those Who Have Seen Shall Never Unsee: Visages of Meese in Their Spectral Forms_. But those stories…God, they were _wild_. That moose was into some weird shit."

As much as he wanted to remain where the stories and laughter had brought him, Richard couldn't ignore the nudging back toward the purpose of the whole meeting. "Dave….Katz?"

Art nodded. "He and Klaus were pretty close."

Richard thought the way Art averted his gaze signaled something more behind those words, but the silence lasted less than a moment before Art shook his head slightly.

"Klaus was no idiot, though. Said some dumb shit, but he was a smart guy."

Jim gave a wry smile. "Think everybody served with that guy sometime."

"Better than a dumb guy who says a lot of smart shit," Richard added.

"Yeah…." Jim exhaled, setting his beer on the table. "Served with him, too."

"I tell you he knew Nixon would get elected?

Richard couldn't say what about the question sent a jolt through him, but he'd learned years before to listen to that. Instincts could be off, but they could also be like a sound from far away, signaling danger not yet visible. "No."

"Yeah, we were talking about the race, who everybody was gunning for—and Klaus goes 'Eh, Nixon's just gonna win anyways.'" Art shook his head again. "Figured it was the drugs talking, but come November, guess who's president?"

The image of Klaus stumbling into a laundromat, covered in sweat and on his way to another club, resurfaced in Richard's mind, but he pushed the thought back. "He knew?"

"Said it was a lucky guess."

Richard looked to Jim, saw the same disquiet he felt reflected back, and pressed on. "Nixon won with—what? Forty-three percent?"

"Something like that."

"And he just said Nixon was gonna win."

"Like he knew," Jim added.

"Look, the guy…." Art paused, pressed his lips together. "He wasn't the only one who used, all right? Not by a long shot. And he said a lot of things like that. Just weird shit. Some of it made sense, some didn't. But at the end of the day, he was a guy you wanted with you when shit hit the fan."

Art sat back, and It took more of Richard's willpower than he cared to admit to keep from slumping in his chair. He wasn't defeated, he wasn't chastised, because this wasn't a fight. Just a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding he couldn't clear up until he corralled the bizarre ideas and half-baked possibilities swirling through his head into something resembling coherent speech.

After a long silence, Jim was the one who spoke. "When'd he join your unit?"

"I don't remember exactly when." It was thoughtful, a consideration. There was still a hint of temper behind it, a note of irritation, but nothing more. "I know he did, since he wasn't there from the beginning, but I don't remember him ever joining. He was just kind of…there one day."

"He ever say where he was from, when he got drafted?"

Art's frown deepened. "Never did say. He was from here, though. Pretty sure."

Jim's questions had set Art pondering things he might not have pondered before—and sharpened the cold unease in Richard's middle. Details no longer swirled past one another like debris in a tornado; they fell to the ground, snapped into place like pieces in a puzzle. He wasn't sure he understood the picture they formed, but he needed to be sure. He nodded to the tattoo on Art's bicep, the bottom half visible beneath his sleeve.

"Did everybody in your unit get that tattoo?"

"This one?" Art rolled up his sleeve, revealing the same tattoo Klaus had worn: a skull emblem below the words _Sky Soldiers _and _173rd Airborne Division_. "Yep. Same place, same everything."

Not quite the same. Where Art's tattoo had faded and blurred with age, the one Klaus wore—the Klaus he'd met, at any rate—appeared more freshly inked. "How long was he there?"

Art looked down at the table. Any trace of mirth had vanished the moment questions took a turn he didn't like, but Jim's more routine inquiries had brought a sort of wistfulness, as if decent memories had begun to simmer at the back of his mind—the sort that needed no defense or explanation, only sharing. Every bit of cheer drained from him at Richard's question.

"He didn't even make it a year."

Richard felt the bitterness in those words—_had_ felt it time and again, when yet another friendship ended at the front line. He shut his eyes, trying to turn the flood of unwanted memories into a stream, turn the deluge into a current he could stand against.

"Him and Dave both. Fight ended, dust cleared. Dave was dead, Klaus was gone without a trace." Art's intake of breath shook. "Lost 'em both that night."

There was nothing to fill the silence that followed. Richard could have tried. Could have repeated some of the same platitudes he'd been given, knowing they'd remain empty no matter how much sincerity he poured into them.

Once again, Jim spoke first.

"You said they were close."

It was an observation, and a gentle one at that. Art didn't lift his gaze from the table, hands wrapped around his beer.

"You know, I think Dave might've been the first one to talk to him. Can't say for sure, since I don't remember when Klaus joined, but Dave? Saw the guy looking around like he still couldn't figure out how the hell he wasn't back in the States and thought _That guy needs a friend_." His mouth tipped, more in rueful memory than genuine mirth. "There was a while, in the beginning, when the rest of us were wondering how the _hell_ Klaus made it through basic without learning a goddamn thing, and Dave's there with him, showing him what to do. Just all, 'Try it that way. Do it like this. You got it.'"

The image of Klaus—the Klaus he knew—wearing David Katz's dog tags surfaced in Richard's mind. A quickly traded glance with Jim said his friend entertained similar thoughts—with similar disquiet.

"You never heard anything else, after he went MIA?" Richard asked.

Art exhaled. "I'm sure he's dead by now."

Now it was Jim's turn to glance at Richard, meeting his gaze with a frown. Richard gave a small shrug, and Jim returned his attention to Art.

"You remember if he had any other tattoos?"

Art frowned. "Why?"

"Like Jim told you," Richard said slowly, "there's been some weird shit around that guy in the photo."

"Yeah, but what do tats have to do with it?"

"We're not sure we know, either," Richard said.

Art gave them both a long look, let out a short sigh, and leaned forward. "Yeah. Had an umbrella on his forearm. I…always thought it kinda looked like the Academy logo, but never…."

His train of thought ended as his gaze shifted between Richard and Jim.

Richard knew he ought to speak. He didn't trust himself to offer a full explanation, but he knew he should say a few words at least. Stammer something. Begin a sentence and end it too soon. But the more he fought for words, the more they eluded him. In his mind's eye he saw Klaus concentrating on his knitting, Katz's dog tags around his neck as the umbrella on his arm flicked in and out of view.

Klaus.

Klaus _Hargreeves_.

Klaus Hargreeves, haltingly asking about Richard's time in Vietnam as he practiced stitches.

All the impossibilities bound up in that one, all the questions that went along with it, were nothing compared to that one certainty. He didn't know how. He couldn't say why. But in that moment, Richard would have bet money that the Klaus he knew, the Klaus Art knew, and the Klaus Reginald Hargreeves had adopted as an infant were one and the same.

Art's gaze managed to pin them both down. "Are…you guys gonna tell me what's going on, or…."

Richard drew a breath and then another. The first one shook, the second was steadier. He needed a way to phrase what he had to say, a means of softening it, but there was nothing. "I don't think Klaus is dead."

For a fraction of a second, Art's face went entirely blank; then half a dozen emotions warred for dominance. Confusion. Shock. Anger. Relief. Despair.

Hope.

"If you're shitting me—"

"I'm not. Swear to God, I'm not."

"So what the hell made you say it?"

Richard opened his mouth to answer, traded a glance with Jim and thought better of it.

Jim drew a long breath and pointed to the photo on the memorial wall.

"Because I caught him crying over that picture just a few days ago."


	5. Brothers in Arms, Part One

_Author's Note: This chapter contains period-typical homophobia. _

* * *

_**1968**_

Humid air, heavy with rain, wrapped around Art's skin as he sighted his target.

Klaus never strayed too far, when he wandered, never went too near the edges of camp, but that didn't make him easy to track down. For how high he could raise his voice and how loudly he could laugh, the guy could be quieter than Spurlock when he wanted to sneak around.

Speak of the devil….

Art went over the story in his mind. His latest contribution to the Spurlock canon had brought laughter, sure, but most of those stories earned at least a chuckle. This one, though—this one had garnered a piece of advice, echoed and approved by every man who heard it: _"You've gotta tell Klaus." _Being encouraged to share a joke with the rest of the group was one thing, but to hear your joke should be brought to the man who could make an entire tent laugh with a quip and a scowl? Well. There were greater achievements, higher honors, but none sent Art out in search of them.

A few steps took him close enough to see Klaus wasn't smiling. Nothing Art hadn't seen before, but that just made him quicken his pace. The second he heard what Art had in store, that frown would disappear and he'd—

It was the finer nuances in the look Klaus wore that stopped him first. He'd seen Klaus upset before, of course, seen him distraught and nervous and plain old scared. He knew of no man who could make it through a war zone without having to fight through any of those things, and if one existed, Art wasn't sure he'd like to meet him.

But there was no gunfire nearby. There was only Dave, standing across and shaking his head as Klaus spoke.

For a few seconds, Art could only watch. Klaus spoke at full tilt, hands upturned in a gesture resembling a plea, words inaudible from that distance. His lips moved too quickly for Art to read much of what he said, but any bozo could tell this was not the sort of conversation Klaus usually involved himself in.

"_That's a sin, you know."_ The warning came to mind with such speed and clarity that Art's grandmother might as well have spoken directly in his ear. He could hear the rest of her lecture, too: Eavesdropping had no purpose aside from gathering information that was never yours to hear, and the only reason why one might want that information was to spread gossip, which was a big enough sin that Art's grandmother had always pursed her lips and pointedly changed the subject whenever something resembling gossip entered her home or church. She might tell a white lie now and then, down one too many glasses of wine on occasion, but gossip was the one sin on which she never compromised.

Art pressed his back against a nearby tree, trying to ignore that old pang of guilt. Even separated from notions of sin and damnation, even stripped of its connotations to old biddies quilting and shooting the shit, his grandmother's disdain for gossip was far from baseless. Rumors never did anyone a bit of good, and he couldn't recall a time when they didn't do the opposite.

But then, it was only gossip if you shared what you knew.

Klaus was still speaking, words tumbling over each other in a rush too fast for Art to read. Dave shook his head, and Klaus spoke again, more briefly this time.

Dave cupped a hand to Klaus' cheek. Words followed, words so slow and clear Art would have needed to look away had he wanted to miss them.

"_I love you." _

Klaus didn't gasp. No confusion twisted his features, no apprehension made him take a step back. The statement was expected—and so was something else, something that didn't follow even after a moment's pause. _"But?" _

Hurt and confusion, disbelief and heartbreak crossed Dave's features, not warring for dominance so much as gathering into a force of their own, blending together and becoming something new. Without a word, Dave pulled Klaus into his arms.

Neither spoke after that.

* * *

"One tat doesn't prove a thing."

"They share more than one tattoo," Richard said. "You know that."

Art did know that. And a part of him wanted to be content with it, to take that fact and turn it into something resembling closure. "Look, Klaus—the Klaus _I_ knew—he had 'em on his hands, too. _Hello_ on one, _Good Bye_ on the other."

Richard and Jim traded glances, and Art knew what he'd hear before they spoke. "Our Klaus had those, too," Jim said.

There was no point in asking whether the locations matched; as best he could recall, the tattoos on their Klaus and the tattoos on the Klaus he'd served with were in the same places. Klaus, his Klaus, hadn't been the only man to wear that Sky Soldiers tattoo—Art was living proof of that—but he knew of only one with an umbrella on his arm and pleasantries on his palms.

"You said he looked like that picture."

"Just like it," Jim said.

"Like he'd stepped right out of the frame," Richard added.

Art drew a breath, but the small sip of oxygen did little to ease the dizziness threatening to tip him out of his chair and onto the floor. "So what are you saying? That they're the same damn guy?"

Again they traded glances. Art waited for one to speak, waited for some statement he could shoot down, but Jim looked at the table and Richard looked to the photo again.

Art got to his feet so quickly the dizziness overtook him a moment, and he clutched the table for support. When his vision returned, he crossed to the photo and found Klaus in a second.

"Fifty years." He heard the scraping of chairs against the floor but didn't turn from the photo. "It's been fifty years since that photo, and you're telling me he looks _exactly_ the same?"

"As best we can tell." Richard's words carried a sigh. "That picture's not the clearest."

He hadn't recanted what he'd said, but he hadn't backed it up unequivocally, either. Art's mind went frantically over the details he'd been given, the details he'd handed over, searching for any inconsistencies or alternate interpretations that might end this bizarre charade before he started to believe it himself. Yet all that came to mind were moments fifty years past. The time he'd heard Klaus humming to himself and recognized the tune, years later, in a Disney movie. The way he'd simply appeared one day, with no dog tags and no apparent memory of the training he would have received….

"You saw him crying over _this_ picture?"

Jim nodded, joining Art at the wall. Before Art could think of another question that might cut whatever Jim might say short, Jim pointed to the man beside Klaus, a man at the edge of the group. "Over this guy right here."

Dave.

"You sure?"

"He was wearing Katz's dog tags, too."

Another wash of dizziness threatened to take him, but this time Art steadied himself with a deeper breath. There was an explanation. There had to be. A logical, rational explanation. "Maybe—look, assholes pretend to be vets all the time. Maybe he just put more thought into it than most of 'em do."

"Yeah, _vets_," Jim said, leaning on the plural. "Not one vet in one picture."

"We didn't even know that guy's name until you came in." He sensed, more than saw, Richard approach the wall. "And you can't see his tattoos in the photo."

It was true, Art had known it was true, and yet hearing it made him want to whip out some fact that would bring the whole illusion crashing down in a second. He settled for pacing toward the nearest table and back again instead. "He tell you his surname?"

"No."

"Did you _ask_?"

"Didn't get much chance," Jim said.

_Bullshit. _Art stopped short of saying it. He didn't know if they'd had time to ask, how many chances they'd gotten or whether or not their conversations—if they'd happened at all—made such questions impolite and insensitive. Better not to assume.

"Look." Art wasn't sure of exactly what he was about to say, but he plunged ahead, snatching up whatever words came to mind. "He went MIA fifty years ago. If he popped in here, there's no way in _hell _he'd look just like that picture, unless time travel's involved."

No derisive snorts followed those words. No chuckles, no rolled eyes, not so much as a smirk. It wasn't until the silence settled over them, until Jim frowned thoughtfully at the photo and Richard opened his mouth as if to speak and shut it again, that Art realized he hadn't simply expected them to scoff.

He'd wanted them to.

* * *

_**1968**_

Art's instincts screamed for him to run for the first person he saw and spill everything. It would all tumble out in a flurry of words that might not swing anywhere near coherence, but it would be out and someone else would know, someone who could judge what to do with it better than he could. The secret would no longer be his; it would belong to whoever he found, and the decision would be in their hands. Knowledge would remain, but responsibility would not.

It didn't take him long to find someone, or for someone to find him. He wasn't sure which and didn't much care. He only knew George crossed his path, smile disappearing at the look Art couldn't shake.

"You okay, man? Look like you've seen a ghost."

_Seen a ghost_. That was more than an idiom—or it was now, anyway, now that Klaus was a part of their unit. Art was free to respond with some generic brush-off, but a failure to follow up an invite like that with a Spurlock story would be a greater indicator that something was wrong than any sort of honest answer.

Art knew what he had to say, but the words wouldn't surface. He forced a smile instead. "Yeah, Spurlock's out there, edge of camp. Took the biggest shit I've ever seen, wiped his ass on a baguette."

George sighed. "Shit sandwiches _again_?"

"C'mon, _you_ try cooking with those hooves."

George's snort wasn't quite a laugh—nowhere near one, in fact. After the resounding approval Art's last joke had earned, this reaction stung less like disappointment and more like failure. Then again, he wasn't sure he'd have been able to come up with a better quip even if he'd had more than two seconds to prepare.

"You seen Dave?"

For one awful second, Art was certain the truth had bloomed on his face. Heat rushed to his cheeks; he had to remind himself to draw a breath in and let it out. _"I know when you're lying,"_ Grandmother had said on more than one occasion. That she'd said it when his lies were all in her head and the truth was all he'd given her had eroded his faith in her ability to pluck out his falsehoods on sight, but that didn't make others blind to them.

The second passed, and George did not react. No narrowed eyes. No concern. No questions.

"Nope. Haven't seen him."

George sighed again and continued on his way. His chosen direction took him toward the pair, technically speaking, though they'd have the advantage of a few minutes' lead.

Art had time to call after and steer George in the right direction. He had time to think of a way to mask it, to make the truth covert enough to fit with his earlier lie. He could do it. He _should_ do it.

Instead, he watched in silence as George moved out of earshot and out of sight.

* * *

"Klaus _Hargreeves_." Jim's emphasis was not lost on Art. "Means he's Reginald's son."

"_If _he's the same guy."

"If he is," Richard said slowly, as though mulling it over as he spoke, "then it might explain some things."

"Like what?" Art spent a second resisting the urge to pace before walking the length of the memorial wall and back again. It wasn't near enough to clear his head—but then, he doubted a jog around the city block would manage that. "All that explains is how he got the same name as the Academy kid."

"You read his sister's book."

It wasn't a question. When first published, _Did you read it? _had been the question on everyone's lips. The book was mentioned by name only at first; before the publication passed its first anniversary, inquiries as to whether or not a friend or acquaintance had read it had become common enough that most anyone listening understood that_ it _meant Vanya Hargreeves' autobiography. The question wasn't asked so much anymore. Asking was pointless when you knew the answer would be _Yes_.

"Yeah. I read it." Parts of it, at least. As he read, the sense of discomfort had progressed from nagging to grating, and the cause went beyond the psychological torture that had been Vanya Hargreeves' childhood. Something about the way she included no contemporary quotes from her siblings, no insight from their adult selves that he could see, had left him with the sensation that he was peering into their lives through the lens of assumption and hearsay, seeing moments and hearing conversations that they would have kept to themselves. No matter how he tried to shake it, no matter how he told himself that she must have consulted her siblings before publication or that she could tell her own story without their input, he'd eventually set the book down, removed his bookmark, and returned it to the library.

"So you know what he'd do to those kids."

A pit formed in his stomach, not unlike the one that had been his companion while reading Vanya's autobiography. She hadn't known all the details, hadn't been privy to them—and that was just as well. The word _experiments_ only belonged in talk about children when the conversation centered on the project you were helping them build for the school science fair. "I figured he hadn't seen his dad in years."

"Could've lured him back," Jim said. "Hunted him down, sprung it on him out of the blue."

If Vanya Hargreeves' account was remotely accurate, than what Jim proposed was a possibility, albeit one that came with a laundry list of assumptions. That time travel was real. That it had happened. That it could happen again, that it could snatch anyone from their life in the present and drop them in the past, or the future, or some unholy combination of the two, if those old cliches about tearing holes in space and time had any validity.

But more than anything, it assumed Klaus Hargreeves—the one he knew—was alive.

* * *

_**1968**_

Maybe he'd jumped to conclusions.

Art had only seen a hug, after all. A hug prefixed by a cupped cheek and a rather unambiguous phrase, if nothing more. The notion they were only friends crumbled beneath the sheer weight of what he'd witnessed, but he entertained it nonetheless. Best to be sure before he leaped to action.

He could see Dave from where he stood, offering Lawrence a smile and a few words—inaudible from where he stood, but knowing Dave, they weren't the sort to leave the other man angry or despairing for the next hour or so. Sure enough, Lawrence's frown became a smile before Dave clapped him on the shoulder and turned away.

Art didn't know a man who wasn't Dave's friend. Even those he didn't see every day, even those he'd only met in passing, were treated to the same smiles and warmth. Give him half a minute and he'd pull you into a quick conversation about things back home, things you'd forgotten you'd mentioned; give him longer and he'd make the worst snafu look solvable.

He'd heard of men like that, from the stories his Dad sometimes dusted off and brought out for company, but he'd never understood what it was to serve with one until Dave had walked right up, chatting away as if they'd known each other since first grade. Never appreciated it until Dave had found him after their first firefight, brushed some lingering dust and rubble away with a shaking hand, and asked if _he_ was okay. Herman, weaving in and out of Dad's time in France, had been a favorite character, one who brought a smile to teller and listener alike each time he entered the story. Art wasn't certain he had the proper word to describe what Dave was and didn't want to seek it out at the risk of sounding too sentimental.

Klaus wandered over. If he wasn't marching, he didn't walk or run. He wandered and ambled. The sight of Charlie sent a smile to his lips, and whatever he said brought a laugh and a response in kind. Dad had served with men like that too, men who could find a joke nearly anywhere they looked, but none like Klaus. None who would begin a meandering story, drop it at the first distraction, and deliver the punchline hours later, all the funnier for having been delayed. None who could turn a simple question about the mail into a humorously suggestive one. It was a different sort of gift Klaus possessed, one that brought laughter to a war in the business of silencing it.

The image of that embrace, that cupped cheek and those words, resurfaced in Art's mind.

A part of him found a certain amount of sense in it. The way they always seemed to be together, when excuses aligned. The little smile Dave wore when Klaus spoke, the smile he never brought out for anyone else. The way neither seemed bothered by a brush of the skin, a chance moment that brought their faces too close.

Another part of him, a larger part, would have cheered their match, had one been a woman.

He didn't have to tell _someone_. Just them. Find Dave or Klaus alone—probably Dave, he knew Dave better—tell him what he'd seen and watch his reaction. He wouldn't need a renunciation, or an apology, or anything of the like; he only needed to let Dave know the cat had put a paw out of the bag. Let him know he'd been spotted, let him know he was accountable to someone, and the problem would solve itself.

The impromptu battle of wits between Klaus and Charlie ended with chuckles on both sides. Klaus looked off in the opposite direction, then back to Dave; he didn't begin walking until Dave did and then he fell in step. Art didn't try to read their lips, but their easy smiles had returned. Whatever had led to Klaus' impassioned pleading earlier seemed to have been, for the moment, resolved.

"_I love you." _

"_But?" _

Art tried to keep the moment from resurfacing yet again, but it bubbled up for the umpteenth time. He'd heard of people who witnessed things like that, secrets that could destroy the one who held it and everyone around them. People who had come forward, who addressed what they saw and made sure help was received and all was put to rights. He'd heard the glowing terms with which they were described, of the humble quiet with which they received whatever accolades were due them. _"It was nothing,"_ they tended to say, with a modesty betraying the warm glow of satisfaction from within. _"I was just doing my part, that's all." _

When Art thought back to what he'd seen, when he made up his mind to do what needed done, he felt none of the steely resolve such responsibility was said to provide. He only felt sick.

He shouldn't have been watching in the first place.

Dave, Klaus—they were his friends. Brothers, even. Spying on siblings might be a time-honored tradition in families fortunate and unfortunate enough to have more than one child, but there came a point when things left the realm of friendly teasing. He wasn't sure exactly where that line might be, but he knew he'd crossed it.

Even so, what he'd seen couldn't remain in the dark. They were his friends, and they needed help. He could bring it up with Dave, word the question to offer him as many loopholes and escape routes and possible, and then never address it again. Pretend he'd seen nothing and move on.

Yet the moment he revealed what he'd seen, even to Dave and no one else with nobody around, he'd acknowledge that something had happened. Something had happened, he'd seen it happen, and all the trust he'd placed in Dave and the trust Dave had placed in him meant nothing next to the chance to lurk in hopes of seeing something worth pouncing on.

Klaus came back around. No Dave, but that was just as well. He raised a hand in greeting, Klaus returned it, and they met in the middle.

"Hey." He drew out the word. "Somebody said you were looking for me for something?"

He'd made a decision, loosely speaking, but it lacked the peace and surety of a resolution. It felt like cowardice, like surrender.

But he still had a good joke to tell. That was something.

Art cracked a smile. "You hear why Spurlock never goes up on mountains?"

* * *

They said Klaus Hargreaves was alive.

Alive and talking and knitting and _here_, in the city, looking near identical to his photographic double.

It was impossible. Art knew he shouldn't believe it until he saw it with his own eyes, yet here he was entertaining the possibility on the word of two men who had been unknown to him days before.

Two men who had gone out of their way to find him because of the soldier in the photograph.

Because of Klaus.

A dozen half-formed questions swam through his mind, circled him and fell away before he could snatch them out of the air. None of the theories or possibilities quite fell into place, but Art thought he could spot where they might fit; there were holes, of course, but the picture remained, incomplete but comprehensible.

Klaus.

Alive.

In the city.

Art tried to wrap his head around it. For as long as he'd held out hope, for as long as he'd waited for news and excused Klaus' continued absence and clung to stories of soldiers who'd gone missing and resurfaced decades later, now that he had what he'd sought, it kept slipping through his fingers. He tried to picture Klaus ambling into the same VFW bar in which he sat, tried to imagine him wandering down the streets, but his memory remained tied to the A Shau Valley. Try as he might, Art couldn't separate Klaus from Vietnam.

He had to see it for himself.

A question at last burst through the flurry in his mind, and Art knew before he voiced it that it was the only one that mattered.

"Where is he?"


	6. Brothers in Arms, Part Two

_**1969**_

Someone had to stay with the body.

Art didn't know at which point _someone _became _him, _didn't remember anyone pointing to him and saying _"Stay with Dave."_ He didn't remember much of the past hour, if it had been an hour, or how long it had been since the smoke and dust cleared and silence overtook the battlefield. He only remembered Dave.

His friend lay beside him in the dirt. Someone had closed his eyes. Art tried to remember who, wished he could remember who, but the thought refused to surface. It could've been one of the officers. It could have been Lawrence. It could have been anyone nearby, anyone who'd seen it and decided Dave deserved that one small act of decency. Events like that, small but significant happenings in the battle's aftermath, slipped through his mind like dust through his fingers. When he closed his eyes, he saw Dave; when he opened them, he saw debris of the battle that had ended him.

Plenty of men died with their eyes open, and plenty died of wounds that weren't an instant kill. They died screaming, they died calling out for mothers thousands of miles away, they died slower than any man should have to. Art had seen it, had offered what useless comfort he could when circumstances brought him to the side of a dying friend. He'd made it too late this time—far too late—but even if he'd made it in time it wouldn't have mattered much. Bullet wound to the chest, right in the center. Dave would've had a minute or two of agony, a minute or two of panic, as he choked and gasped for breath that wouldn't come, as he tried to call for help, tried to—

Art hugged his knees to his chest, digging dirt-blackened fingernails into his shins, though the cloth of his pants absorbed much of the pain. The thought didn't quite leave, but it shuffled to the back of his mind. Silence took its place, but other thoughts, darker even than the one he'd just banished, threatened to fill it.

He had to do something for Dave.

He wasn't the first of Art's friends to die. Months back, Isaac had caught a piece of shrapnel in his stomach, hemorrhaging beyond what a medic could fix before any medic could try. He hadn't seen Dave take his place beside his friend's body, hadn't been there when he began speaking, but when Art came near he'd heard the words of a psalm, cracking beneath Dave's grief.

Art had recognized it then, known the words belonged to Scripture when he heard them, but the psalm's specific number had eluded him then and it eluded him now. He should have paid more attention, should have noted a line or two and looked them up later, should have found a way to ask if the one he'd recited had been his favorite or simply the right one to recite when a friend died—but the question was a distraction now.

The Twenty-third had been the first psalm he'd memorized, back when the words meant little to him beyond their soothing cadence, but no memories of reciting_ The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want_ to the delight of parents and Sunday school teacher alike came to mind. Instead, his father's voice cut through, strong and steady, yet never rising more than a few notes above a whisper. For a moment, Art was back home on the sofa, head bowed through the psalm meant to follow him through Vietnam, meant to offer comfort and protection from horrors he could not yet comprehend. Maybe it wasn't the right one.

But it was what he had.

"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High…"

Art hadn't realized just how quiet the world became after a battle. He'd heard it before, felt it before, but now that he spoke, it was as though the silence itself pressed around him, threatening to swallow his words and suffocate them on the way down.

"…shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God, in him I will trust."

His voice had fallen to a whisper, but he kept on. There was a certain rhythm to reciting psalms, a tempo no one ever explained or laid out as a requirement but one everybody fell into after the first line or so. Staying within it was like keeping to the grooves separating a country backroad from the countryside. Hold to the rhythm, stay on tune, and get to the end in one piece.

"Surely he shall deliver thee…"

He drew a breath that threatened to shake him to his core. This was the wrong psalm. The worst psalm. The worst piece of Scripture he could've chosen without straying into the Song of Solomon. He tried to think of another, but even the Twenty-third only surfaced in snippets and snatches.

"….from the snare of the fowler, and from…"

Art tried to get the rest of the verse out, but it was like swallowing sawdust. He raised his head, thinking he might see only shadows of trees silhouetted against the greying darkness of predawn, soldiers and officers moving about like ghosts, but one of those figures approached.

Klaus.

Art hadn't seen him since the deafening chatter of gunfire turned to silence. The words _unaccounted for _and _possibly missing_ circled his name, or they had before Art was told to stay with Dave. But this, this figure approaching out of the dark, it could be him, walking on his own two feet.

_He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. _

He watched the figure's approach, hardly daring to breathe. Any moment it would solidify, taking on that familiar lanky frame, a stride that was anything but purposeful but still managed to get from one point to the next. A few steps took the figure closer. It didn't look like Klaus, not from where he sat, but nobody looked familiar from a great enough distance.

_Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor by the arrow that flieth by day; _ _nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. _

Art's stomach sank. The gait was all wrong, more of a lope than an amble; he wasn't tall enough. Even before his face came into focus, Art saw he wore a shirt beneath his flak vest.

George.

Not Klaus.

Of course, that didn't mean what he thought. Klaus didn't _have _to pass him by on his way to prove he was indeed accounted for; he could go in any direction that made sense to him. It was probably better if he didn't pass by Art, at any rate. Best if the news of Dave's death were broken to him gently. Best if he heard of it through soft words and hedging.

Art couldn't quite read George's expression—not for lack of emotion, but for the sheer number of them blended together and cloaked in a veil of weariness. He raised his head as George drew closer.

"Klaus?" The question came out in a croak.

George met his gaze for a second, just a second. Then he looked to the ground, sorrow and anger and resignation visible for only a moment before his steps carried him away.

For a moment, Art couldn't breathe and didn't think to, couldn't move and didn't want to. He listened to the silence nibble at George's footsteps until the sound was gone. He watched his friend's retreat, watched as a few more strands of darkness faded to light, but no new figures ambled out of the jungle, no familiar voice called his name.

He should have shouted, screamed to the heavens, forced God to listen and _hear_ what he had to say, really hear it, but the words refused to form and Art lacked even a whisper to carry them. He hugged his knees closer, and it brought no comfort. He buried his face and waited for tears that did not come, feeling as though someone had torn out his insides and stitched him back up. Only the psalm remained, the psalm he couldn't have recited had he wanted to. The psalm he never wanted to hear again.

_A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. _

* * *

They didn't know where Klaus was.

It was expected. Richard and Jim barely knew him, had only guessed at his surname. He'd met them in public spaces, and only one of those meetings had been planned. They wouldn't know where he lived or where he was staying, and it simply wasn't reasonable to hold them accountable for his whereabouts.

Even so, Art had to bite back a few sharp questions when they said as much.

Jim had taken two numbers from Diego—Diego _Hargreeves;_ Art still wasn't sure he'd fully comprehended the notion he might have served with a former superhero—and had left both of them at home.

"I'll head back and grab 'em," Jim said.

Richard looked at his watch, then out the window at the darkening sky. "Mind if we just follow you? If we want to catch him tonight, seems like we should try and call before it gets too late."

Art could have climbed into the front seat of Richard's station wagon, but he'd always preferred to drive. Better to have a ready means to leave and not need it than need it and be stuck. Before long, he paced the teal carpet of the entryway to Jim's apartment, one ear inclined toward the living room. Jim was the only one on the phone, the only one who could hear it ringing, but the moment he greeted whoever answered would be heard by all.

Jim's apartment had a kitchen the size of a postage stamp, and that was where Richard stood, leaning against the sink. Art couldn't comprehend how he could remain so still—but then, none of the men he'd served with had reportedly popped up out of the woodwork fifty years later, looking the same as they had the day they'd vanished.

Not to Art's knowledge, anyway.

Jim took a few steps to the left, then back to the right. The phone cord stretched out as he approached the opposite wall, sprang back into loops as he returned. The drive over had taken over twenty minutes, to say nothing of the hours the pair of them had spent tracking down everyone in Klaus' unit—in _his _unit—the weeks and months and years expended trying to find just one man who could name the soldier in the photo.

It was a lot of effort to put into a hoax, especially one with no obvious gain for either perpetrator. A lot of time to spend listening to stories of a man whose identity they planned to use for some twisted purpose. Sincerity was fickle, the sort of thing that could be faked by anyone with enough people skills to feign empathy, but Art didn't need to lean on what he thought he'd felt from Richard and Jim when the evidence spoke clearly enough. The two men were convinced of what they were selling. Which didn't necessarily mean it was real; just that whoever might be behind it had been persuasive enough to pull the wool over their eyes.

Jim set the receiver back in its cradle, took it back up, and dialed the second number. Art only stopped his pacing when Jim spoke.

"Hey! Yeah, I'm calling for a guy named Diego. Yeah, Diego Hargreeves. He there?"

The long pause made it clear he wasn't, even before Jim's face fell.

"All right. Give him my number when you see him, will you? Let him know I called about his brother Klaus."

He placed the receiver back in its cradle, but his hand lingered there a moment as he stared, as though waiting for it to ring again.

"Nothing?"

Jim shook his head. "I dunno what else to try."

Art inhaled. They'd reached a dead end, and surrender was the most obvious solution. Go back to his family and enjoy the rest of his vacation—or enjoy it as much as he could, with thoughts of Klaus at the front of his mind. Push those thoughts to the back, accept them as a strange interruption in his trip. Wonder for the rest of his life, however long that may be, if one decision on his part could have changed the outcome, could have brought him face-to-face with an old friend or with an actor hired for the strangest, cruelest prank ever pulled on a veteran of the armed forces.

"You said he's a Hargreeves, right?"

"We're pretty sure," Richard said.

"'Bout ninety-eight percent sure," Jim added.

Those were good odds. Art had shed his coat some minutes back, when his pacing and Jim's heater worked to make the extra layer less than tolerable, and he lifted it from the floor, putting it on so quickly his sleeves bunched.

"Which way's the Academy?"

* * *

_**1976**_

"Got married last year."

Art had thought his voice might be too loud, loud to the point of vulgarity, but it was no more so than it might have been in an average park. The only other visitors, an elderly couple standing a dozen or so plots away, didn't shoot him a glare or look up from their own mourning. Cemeteries, it seemed, were made to handle a little conversation.

"Her name's Libby. Met her at a church potluck. There was this bowl, and it had a huge pile of whipped cream on top, more sprinkles than I'd ever seen in my life. I figure it's pudding or something, go to take a spoonful. Libby sidles on over and whispers in my ear, _'It's tuna.'_ Yeah. Some asshole put whipped cream on a tuna salad."

Stillness greeted his words, filled only by a soft breeze and the rustling of grass beneath his feet, but Dave wouldn't have accepted the story in silence. There would have been laughter—some of it disbelieving, most of it in good humor. Jokes would follow, but Art didn't want to think about those. He wanted to hear them in Dave's voice, carried on his laughter as that familiar smile lit up his face.

He wanted to hear Klaus say he would've eaten that tuna salad, whipped cream and all.

There'd been no word since the day he went missing. Art had thought he might see him with the other American POWs returned at the war's conclusion, but Klaus was not among them and his name had not surfaced since.

When he slept, he saw Klaus dead or dying, surrounded by barbed wire and the enemy. Sometimes the dream lingered on his misery and sometimes it did not, but the end was always the same. Klaus dead, just like Dave. Like every other man who now appeared to him in nightmares and flashes that intruded even on his waking senses.

Art closed his eyes. There had been other soldiers, men he'd never met and never would, who disappeared from conflict only to resurface decades later with no awareness that the war had ended. He knew those instances were rare, that he wouldn't have heard the names of those men if theirs had been a common feat, but the thought of Klaus holed up in a cave someplace, only dimly aware of news from outside as he made fools of his would-be or former captors, brought a small smile. He clung to it, willing it to drive back thoughts of the alternative—thoughts that sprang more readily to mind.

He regarded the headstone. There were fewer coins now than there had been a few years back, closer to his death, but Art still spied a couple of nickels from men who'd known him from boot camp beside pennies from other visitors. His was the only dime, but not every man Dave had served with could make it out to his grave at the same time. They might pass through weeks or months after Art returned to his routine, but they would come. Dave would not be left alone for long.

That familiar guilt wrapped itself around his shoulders again, whispering in his ear. The first time he'd spoken to Dave since returning home, the first time he'd managed more than a few choked sounds and silence, and the best he had to offer was a story about tuna salad. He hadn't even wept for his friend in the seven years he'd been gone, but he could tell a story about himself as good as anyone.

"Still no word on Klaus." Dave would want to know that, if he were near enough to listen, to know where he was and how he was and the answer to every other question Art had asked himself since the day he vanished. No news was anything but good news, in this case, but it was still something to share. "If he was back in the States, I'd have brought him along."

The memory of what he'd seen all those years ago surfaced again, as fresh and clear as though he'd witnessed it the day prior. But he didn't push it back. He'd let it come to him in recent years, let it remain in his thoughts long enough to lose its sharpest edges. The fear he'd felt then, the certainty that he had to tell someone, anyone, and the shame that he couldn't, had faded—first to a sense that what he'd seen hadn't been worth breaking their trust, then to something new, something gentler that Art still hadn't identified. Something that left him with an echo of the hollowness he'd felt the night Dave died and Klaus vanished.

He'd seen them differently after that day, noticed things that had before escaped him. How whatever tension Klaus carried ebbed away at Dave's approach. How Dave's smile always seemed a little wider, the light in his eyes a little brighter, when Klaus was near. There were times, and probably more of them than Art had witnessed, when they seemed to forget they were fighting a war at all.

"You should've gone home with him."

The words were out before he had a chance to ponder them, but once they hung in the air, he knew he couldn't have said anything else. They were the only truth worth speaking, even if they set his mind on a course he didn't want to follow. He tried to shut out thoughts of what might have been, of Klaus free and Dave alive, sharing smiles and bandying jokes back and forth as they explored whatever new city they'd chosen, together for as long as they had left and as happy as two could be.

He'd heard of moments like this, moments of sudden pain meant to bring relief, compared to the sensation of ripping off a bandage. And he knew, in that moment, that the analogy was not and never had been accurate. Tearing off a bandage never felt like tearing off his own skin.

His eyes stung; the headstone blurred. He shoved a fist against his mouth, biting down in an attempt to keep his tears silent, but a soft cry escaped regardless as what may have been faded into what _was_.

Six years. Six years he'd visited his friend's grave and watched in silence. Six years he'd stood and thought and remembered and hated his inability to muster up a single word, but he'd stood on his own feet and walked off without shedding a tear.

Art sank to the grass, hugged his knees tight, and gave into his grief.

* * *

The Academy wouldn't be hard to miss.

It had been a city block, he'd heard, once upon a time—a whole city block with storefronts and apartments and pay phones. Over the years, though, the Academy had swallowed up those shops and homes one by one, not so much erasing them as subsuming them into a new whole. He'd never been inside; from what he knew, not even the press had been allowed to pass that wrought iron gate. Only those seven kids and Reginald had seen what went on within those walls.

"_Bet your dad would be laughing at me now, huh, Klaus?" _

"_Yeah. And he laughed like this." Klaus knit his brows, gaze hardening into a glare, lips drawn into such a scowl that Art had to laugh—a sound echoed by the other men in the tent. _

Klaus had never described his father in detail, had never provided a clear image to conjure up for stories like that. Art had never crafted a picture of his own, but he'd never imagined him with white hair and a monocle, either.

Even so, thoughts of the famed Reginald Hargreeves wearing that scowl and that glare, of turning them both on his children, came easily to mind.

Too easily.

Art's grip tightened on the steering wheel. There was still no evidence the Klaus he'd served with was alive or the same age as the day he'd vanished, and no reason to assume he'd served with the same Klaus Hargreeves who could speak to the dead. A shared weakness for drugs proved nothing. Shared tattoos proved much more, but he hadn't seen them yet.

He had to find this Klaus, that was all. Find him, get a good look at him, ask him a few questions that only his friend could answer. Gain more evidence, examine it as objectively as he could, and make a judgment. He had to remain impartial. Focusing too closely on what _might be_ would distract him from what _was_.

Art sucked in a breath, but his heart refused to slow. A short film played in his mind's eye, one where Klaus greeted him with that smile he remembered, greeted the story of how he'd found him with a laugh he hadn't heard in fifty years.

He'd been able to call it up, back when the war was still one of those subjects you avoided at Thanksgiving dinner and not a chapter in a high school textbook; but when he reached for it now, he heard only an echo that might have been Klaus' voice or might have been a voice he'd heard on television.

He should have summoned that laugh, back when he remembered it. Endured the pain it brought, allowed it to carry memory after memory in its wake. He'd have done it daily, if it meant holding onto his friend a little longer.

Two blocks from the Academy, red and blue lights filled the darkness. Art pulled to a stop, rolling down his window as a uniformed officer approached.

"There an accident?"

"You could say that." The officer glanced over her shoulder, toward the Academy. Art followed her gaze, but couldn't make out much through the blinding haze of police lights. "The whole Academy just came down."

"_What_?"

"We're going to need you to take another route—"

"How?" Dizziness overtook him, passing as quickly as it had come—though the pit in his stomach remained. "I mean, what happened?"

"We're not sure yet, but—"

"Is everyone okay?"

"Like I said, sir, we don't know yet."

Art barely heard the irritation in her tone. She opened her mouth to speak again, but he'd already shifted into reverse.

* * *

_**2015**_

Save for the presence of more headstones than there had been, the cemetery hadn't changed much since Art's first visit. He still walked the same path to his friend, stood on the same land beneath the same sky. The world outside had grown bigger, louder, but the cemetery remained as serene as ever.

"Maddie's fourteen now." A soft smile quirked his lips at the thought of his granddaughter. "She and a couple other kids got in trouble for this poem they wrote, but she's got a teacher named Butz, and he acts like one from what I hear. What was she _supposed_ to do?"

He laid his dime on Dave's headstone. It sat alone, but he'd spotted a nickel the last time he visited and a penny the time before that. And no coins at all didn't mean no visitors, only that whoever had dropped by hadn't seen the need to communicate as much.

"If that's a down payment on a drink for the next time we meet up," Art said, "then you've probably got enough money by now to buy the whole goddamn bar. If inflation's not too bad up there."

Whenever that aspect of the coin's tradition was spoken of, it had the ring of a joke, but Art had never regarded it as anything less than half of one. Years had a way of changing a man's views of death and what came after. Visions of blue skies carpeted with endless white clouds upon which winged souls played harps and sang hymns had become something less sterile, less cloying. Maybe Heaven was a bar where old friends waved you over to a table and dusted off stories you hadn't heard in years. Maybe Hell was getting kicked out for starting a fight.

Or maybe there was nothing and he'd been talking to a slab of rock for forty-five years.

The breeze became wind, carrying the chill of a coming winter, but Art's shiver had little to do with the cold.

Klaus wasn't the only POW who'd never returned from Vietnam, not by far. Theories weren't spoken of as commonly as they had been years back, but Art would be lying if he said he hadn't entertained a few before quickly dismissing such an outcome for his friend. Each year, he'd imagined Klaus growing older far from home, trying to make it back and running into obstacle after insurmountable obstacle. But in his mind, Klaus had never stopped trying, and he never would. In his mind, Klaus would one day resurface to the surprise of an entire nation, would regale them with his tale of survival and reunite with whichever Army buddies still lived. Art would be among those there to greet him. No matter what it cost, no matter how long the drive, Art would be there to welcome him home.

He'd sheltered that hope over the years, allowed it to grow old with him. When it became threadbare, he'd locked it away lest it crumble at his touch. Death in combat was one thing; death in a POW camp was another, one he couldn't consider for too long without the nightmares invading his thoughts. There was no evidence Klaus hadn't met that fate, but there was no evidence he had. That was something. That was all the excuse Art needed to cling to hope a little longer.

All the excuse he needed to delay the inevitable.

The forty-fifth anniversary of Klaus' disappearance had come and gone. That would have been a good time to do what needed to be done—or as close to a good time as there could be, for something like that—but Art had stood at his friend's grave and spoke of everything and nothing, had left without saying what he'd come to say.

"Klaus…" His throat closed over the rest of the words. What he'd planned wasn't much, but he still couldn't get it out. Dave had seen visitor after visitor, received coin after coin and word after heartfelt word. If Art couldn't do the same for Klaus, the least he could do was acknowledge he'd never received a decent burial.

Art's breath shook. If he couldn't say what he'd planned, he had to say _something_.

"I don't know when I'll see you again. Probably sooner than later. But when I do…"

He closed his eyes against the tears, exhaled against the sob threatening to choke his words.

"You had better have Klaus with you."

* * *

He drove full circle around the perimeter the police had cordoned off, near enough for red and blue to prick at the edges of his vision, far enough not to earn a few irritated words from the officers guarding every street.

Klaus hadn't been inside.

Art didn't know it for certain. The Academy would've been a roof over his head, a place to escape the streets; and with Reginald dead, it would have been more refuge than it once had been. Chances were good he'd made the Academy his temporary home before its destruction.

But that didn't mean he'd been inside. He could have been out. Not getting high, necessarily; he could have been wandering out somewhere with one of his siblings at the moment of destruction. Or on his way to find Richard or Jim. Or something as simple and banal as ducking into a fast-food restaurant for a greasy burger.

_If_ this Klaus Hargreeves was the same Klaus Hargreeves Vanya had written about.

Art's foot hit the brake just before he made the turn that would have taken him around the perimeter for a second time, and he flipped on his turn signal instead. His headlights caught the name of the street, but he didn't think to read it until it was behind him. He rode it to the next intersection and turned right, took that one a little further before turning left.

A plan. He needed a plan, but he didn't know the city and wouldn't know who to ask for directions. _Get me to the nearest gas station_ would earn him a clear and concise answer, delivered as quickly as it sprang to the stranger's mind. _Help me find a guy, about six foot with some pretty distinctive tattoos, who might be anywhere in the city, including buried under a pile of rubble _would earn strange looks, not answers.

He could have been at the Academy.

He probably had been at the Academy.

Art slapped the volume knob on the radio with slightly more force than necessary. The final notes of the previous song faded out, and warm guitar chords took their place. He breathed deep, turning onto the next street on a whim.

_On the road of experience, trying to find my own way…._

John Denver's voice didn't quite calm his nerves, but it did remind him of calmer times, less desperate times. It called to mind road trips of years past, of driving through state after state with the windows down while voices sang of places he'd been, of country roads and the black magic of Mulholland Drive. He drew a long breath, this one not as shaky as the last, and rolled down the window.

_Sometimes I wish that I could fly away…._

The evening chill poured in alongside sounds of the city. The downtown speed limit wasn't as slow as some places he'd been, but it was slow enough for murmurs of conversation and the _whoosh_ of an occasional passing vehicle to briefly enter his vehicle, carried in on air thick with the scents of fryer oil and spice. A throng of people clustered on the sidewalk, but before Art could scan their faces, a lone figure crossing the street caught his attention.

A tall figure with a mop of dark curls and a familiar tattoo on one shoulder.

Before he could consciously name what he was doing, Art had pulled into the first open spot he saw. A single stray thought had him rearranging his car well enough to escape the notice of any meter maid, but he only remembered that he ought to have fed the meter when he was already ten steps down the sidewalk.

The stranger vanished briefly behind the crowd, then emerged into view as Art quickened his pace.

He'd thought that face might take on unfamiliar features as he approached—a different nose shape, a mouth too wide—but the closer Art drew, the more the stranger resembled memories he'd held to, dredged up thoughts he'd forgotten. Those stubborn curls, springing free the second he removed his helmet. That facial hair, which he refused to shave off even when it would have saved him a few minutes. That same _Hello_ greeting the world from a briefly upraised palm. He still wore his flak vest, though he'd paired it with a striped shirt that showed an inch or two of skin around his middle and pants that….

Was that _leather_?

A chuckle escaped his lips. When he'd imagined Klaus returning to the States, settling back into civilian life as best he could, this wasn't what he'd pictured him wearing. Yet he knew in that moment that this getup, this mishmash of pieces that should have never been put together and managed to work regardless, was exactly what he _should_ have pictured.

This was the Klaus he remembered. Wearing an outfit no one else would dare, looking around for something to catch his interest as he stood in line for tacos.

Art should have approached him quietly. Walked up, asked for recognition, answered questions as they came. But there he was, his old friend, not dead after all but in front of a taco truck, of all places, the perpetrator of the finest disappearing act ever orchestrated in wartime. Art couldn't be polite, couldn't be quiet. He announced his presence with the only words his mind could form.

"Klaus!_ You son of a bitch!_"

He whirled at the sound of his name, and Art felt a spike of fear. His name was Klaus, true; but this might not be_ his_ Klaus. Everyone had a lookalike somewhere. Now he'd have to apologize, laugh through his disappointment just to make things less awkward….

Klaus took a few steps out of line as Art closed the gap. His eyes narrowed in a squint, then widened. A disbelieving laugh found its way out. "_Art?_"

That laugh. Art hadn't forgotten it, not forever. It had simply retreated to the back of his mind, hidden behind a door he couldn't locate; and when he heard it now, all those memories, all those moments where Klaus had laughed came rushing back.

They embraced, clapped each other on the back, and Art held back tears. Fifty years stood between him and the young man Klaus had known, and not one of those years had mattered. Not one of those years had prevented recognition.

It _was _him.

When they finally parted, Art saw the same bewildered joy reflected on Klaus' features. "How—how the hell did you find me?"

"Long story."

Klaus glanced over his shoulder, toward a theater bearing the name Icarus. "Yeah," he said, drawing out the word, "there might not be time for that."

Art nearly frowned. Maybe his siblings needed him elsewhere, and soon, but he could have said so plainly. "Well, how've you been? How'd you get back here?"

Klaus looked away, though Art couldn't tell if the sorrow crossing his face was at the first question or the second. At any rate, it quickly dipped beneath a faint smile. "Would you believe me if I said time travel?"

"Yes."

Klaus stared.

"You look the same as you did fifty years ago," Art said with a laugh. "If you've got a better explanation, let's hear it."

Klaus chuckled, but there was still a trace of that sorrow—more than a trace, even—remaining as he looked back toward the Icarus Theater. "Just…didn't think I'd see you here, that's all."

"What? Wasn't expecting me to hunt you down the second I learned you might still be alive?"

One or two in the crowd turned brief looks of confusion on them. Art didn't much care, and Klaus didn't seem to, either.

"Well, yeah. I mean, that was fifty years ago."

"Right. Fifty years."

A few moments passed in silence. The smile faded, slowly but surely, to nothing, as Klaus turned his gaze toward the sidewalk.

"I guess….I didn't think anyone would notice I was gone."

So he'd _chosen_ to leave when he did, had some control over his arrival and departure—but that was not what made Art stare, for a long minute, until Klaus finally met his gaze.

"What?"

"You know you've said some stupid shit."

He gave a sheepish smile. "Yeah…."

"Like that time you said penguins don't have legs, just feet?"

"Technically they don't—"

"No. Not 'technically.' I looked it up. _They have legs_."

"Okay, but why are you even bringing that up?"

"Because when I say 'nobody would notice' is the stupidest thing you've ever said, I want it to mean something."

For a few seconds, it looked as if Klaus would cry, but Art couldn't tell if the tears were there or not. "I didn't know."

"Didn't—" Memories crowded his mind, memories of laughter and jokes stretched out to the limit, of humor at just the right times and of his face, Klaus' face, popping up right when shit was about to hit the fan, stepping in right when he was needed most. Art wanted to lay all of them out before him, point to each one in turn, ask Klaus if he thought this one meant nothing or if that one was worthless, but there were too many of them and trying to choose one jumbled it up with three more. "So what? You thought you'd just up and leave?"

"Yeah. I mean, I couldn't stay."

There was something more behind those words, but Art scarcely heard it. "You just popped on back without saying goodbye? Without letting somebody know 'Hey, I'm not dead, just need to go home'?"

He half expected a question as to whether or not he would have been believed, but Klaus simply stared at the ground. His shoulders sank a fraction, as if some invisible weight had been added. Art sighed.

"Look. I don't blame you for getting the hell out. I'd've done the same. But—"

Something about the look on his face, about his silence, triggered something Art couldn't quite name. That night. Dave dead, succumbed to his wound. Klaus, never straying far from Dave, always close even in the heat of battle.

A chill brushed his shoulders as a cold pit formed in his stomach.

"You were there when he died. With Dave."

Klaus nodded—stiff, jerky nods that didn't lift his gaze from the sidewalk.

"Jesus _Christ_."

Art should have said more, should have found the perfect words to give to his friend, but they and all others eluded him. He could only place a hand on Klaus' shoulder, wrap him in his arms when he moved closer. There were no tears, none Art could feel, but tears could be fickle things, there when they were least wanted, absent when they were most needed. Maybe they had yet to visit him. Maybe he'd spent them already.

It wasn't until Klaus pulled back, until he brushed at his eyes, that Art remembered moments fifty years gone when he'd done the same. Klaus had never been ashamed to cry, but when it was clear there was little time for tears he would hold them back. Brush them away, like he brushed them away now. Save them for a time when they wouldn't endanger him or anyone depending on him.

Whatever was going on that theater, whatever his siblings or whoever he'd fallen in with had gotten themselves into, it left little time for talk. Of the war, of Dave, of how he'd found himself yanked from his present and thrown into a past no one should have to witness. No time for what he needed. No time for what Art needed.

Not now, anyway.

Art fished in his pocket, found an old receipt and smoothed it out. No pen, so he waved to the woman behind the taco truck's counter. She rolled her eyes at the scribbling motion he made, but set one on the counter. Art wrote several numbers and passed them to Klaus.

"That's my daughter's house," he said, pointing to the first number. "I'll be there 'till the end of the week. That one's my home number. That next one is the one you call if you can't get anybody at either of the other ones."

"Thanks." Klaus took the receipt, but didn't pocket it immediately. He held it in his hands, staring down at the numbers as if he'd been handed a gift. A gift he didn't know he deserved.

There were many things Art had contemplated saying over the years, should Klaus ever be returned home. Most of them he knew were things he'd never say the moment they popped into his head, while others lingered awhile before rejection. A few were edited and re-edited, changed and softened, wording shored up before he realized he'd never have the chance to give them voice.

But there was one thing he'd wanted to say, one thing he'd held onto until the day he gave Klaus up for dead. One thing that remained.

"We lost you _and _Dave that night. Glad you were someplace I could find you."

That uncertainty hadn't left Klaus's face; but the moment he raised his head, Art saw it in full, saw it mixed with gratitude so deep the word fell flat. And when he did, he wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry, or pull Klaus in for another hug.

"Hey. You gonna order or not?"

Art looked up. The other customers had dispersed, a few to the pickup window but most to elsewhere. The truck's owner had one elbow propped up on the counter, gaze drifting between Klaus and a teenager standing a few yards away, nervously shuffling through his wallet.

Klaus laughed. "I should probably order."

"Fine." Art pulled Klaus in for another quick hug. "See you around, all right?"

"Yeah. Sooner or later."

Sooner or later. It wasn't a solid promise, but it was more than Art had gotten. More than he ever thought he'd have. After another quick clap on the back, Art made his way back to his car, stopping at the curb.

He had thought Klaus might have focused his full attention on the taco truck, but that wasn't the case. Art didn't know how long Klaus had been watching him; he only knew that when he turned for one last look, Klaus was smiling. Not as bright a smile as some he'd seen, but this one seemed deeper, more real than others. There was a tinge of melancholy in it too, not strong enough to pull the whole thing down but present nonetheless.

Art had found him.

All those years of hoping, all those years of fear and wonder and awful sick certainty shouldn't have ended with a conversation at a taco truck—but they had.

Klaus had lived. Maybe not in the most orthodox way, but Art had learned fifty years ago not to expect anything of the sort from him. He'd survived the war, skipped past a dozen other horrors that should have taken him, and wound up here, on the side of a street outside a theater, in the very city he'd started from, exactly the same as the day he'd left.

He'd made it home.

Not in the usual way, not in any way Art or anyone else could have predicted, but he'd done it, and he was back. Back in the States with years ahead of him and the worst behind him. The war would follow him; it always followed, no matter the distance. But it hadn't claimed him.

Art raised a hand in farewell, and Klaus returned it.

Maybe this was the end of it. Maybe Klaus would call; maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he would write; maybe he'd forget or choose not to or be constantly stymied by a thousand everyday inconveniences and distractions. Maybe it would be later, rather than sooner, when they spoke again.

But Art had seen him. Not on a memorial wall, not as another statistic, but walking the city in leather pants and a flak vest, smiling and fighting tears in turns. The war was close to him, fifty years closer than it should have been. It would always be closer than he could stand, always a little stronger than he'd thought.

Art started up his car and pulled out onto the street. Klaus had escaped the war once already, done it in such a spectacular fashion Art wouldn't have believed it had he not seen the evidence with his own eyes—but he'd escaped.

He could escape it again.


End file.
